burnt ridge?!

[MidnightCarving]

does anyone know if they plan on opening burn ridge?! dark side and burnt ridge would make almost the whole mountain open.... that would be awesome. i'm hoping one more good dump and we might be in business.

[Spongeworthy]

They just posted a new pic on the web site.

Looks like they actually will open Burnt Ridge this weekend :D

I heard guns over there today. I expect most of the mountain to open up by this weekend, especially if we got supposed heavy snow Friday.

[Snowballs]

They just posted a new pic on the web site.

Looks like they actually will open Burnt Ridge this weekend :D

cool. can't wait. i've been preparing for the cross country trip across cedars by hitching myself up to the suv, donning skis and then "poleing" it around the yard.

get it? pole-ing!!!! hehehe

[jimmer]

should be open 2morrow,but we will see.

[mattchuck2]

Mmmmm . . . High Speed Quad . . . Long Trails . . . . Glades . . . .

Mmmmmmm . . . .

[MidnightCarving]

they opened it up today... and i have to say im kinda dissapointed.... the walk over there is immense, i was hoping they had some kind of grade.. but not really it's almost entirely flat the whole way across. to add to it, the top of echo is basically flat too, i have a feeling there was some engineer that has never skied a day in his life designing the fill they have at the top of echo.

echo itself is going to be a very nice addition, and i hope the glades are as good as everyone raves about, sagamore also looks like a solid addition and that lift is excellent.

[Danzilla]

Bummer. I figured Cedars would be flat. I think they just widened the existing work road which had almost no pitch. I remember walking down the top of echo when I hiked BR in fall 07. I am curious to see the "hedges" trail too - I think it hooked into the old "back country" access off twister which was up and down and up and down.

Are top of echo and ceders undoable for a snow boarder? How do they compare to bottom of ruby? Is it possible to get enough speed coming down twister or showcase to hit ceders with some velocity?

[Harvey44]

Did you take the Gully? That's the way to go. Should at least reduce the flat part.

[MidnightCarving]

dan, the top of echo is manageable for a boarder, but cedars would be a challenge... even if you got some serious speed coming off showcase i think you'd be hard pressed to make it, i think you're correct that they just widened the access road... i would say its about the same length as the old cloud flats, just without the hill heading into it.

harv, taking the gully works, but only if you've already made it over to BR to begin with, well, i suppose if you got into twister glades you can get onto echo and then down to BR through the gully. Not a crowd pleaser, but hey... thats a good thing.

btw the gully lift is no longer with us... a shame, i would have liked to have them keep it with those couple park elements they had over there.

hedges is hard to get a sense for, you only see the very top, then it turns the corner and dissapears... the top has decent pitch though from what i could gather.

I'm headed over again tomorrow morning get myself some of these freshies... see you all there!

[Harvey44]

i suppose if you got into twister glades

That's what I was thinkin. The whole damn mountain should be open now.

See you at the Gondi when it goes green.

[MidnightCarving]

yea harv, going into twister glades works fine but its still not a treat to get over there, it just gives you a good head start.

they opened up sagamore, hope you got to it when i did, it got tracked up real quick but my first run down was epic.

also cirque glades could be done, hope you watched out for the streams

[Snowballs]

i noticed on the main message board that the threads have many, many/ hundreds of views recorded but only a handful of replies. i'm newish here. certainly not one of the clique and have not demonstrated myself to be a yes man. i don't genuflect to the powers that be. so to those who don't post ,here's a more objective report.

when i first raised some questions about br, some poo poo'ed them and one flamed me, trying to cyber bully me. a shoot the messenger tactic. it didn't work.

the only access trail to br flat out sucks! flat flat flat. a third of a mile (maybe half mile!) exercise in poling. no you can't bomb lower show case and get a jump on it. there's too many buildings to go around first and you stall. if you got lil kids, they and you will hate it.

some on here claimed to have walked this trail in the off season and found it not too bad - past the gully it's like sunway or twister...aleast it won't be work.

yea right! this suckas flat as a parking lot. a long parking lot. the very bottom of Otter slide has more pitch. only a VERY short part has slope enough to move you ever so slowly. mantras i heard on this trail today were ....this sucks!....wtf!...you gotta be kiddin me!...etc.

once you reach the lift you'll see it is indeed a very nice lift. Sagamore, the trail that goes under the lift is rated a black diamond. Gore claims " think Topridge only bigger and badder". lmao. what a joke. Sagamore can't hold a candle to Topridge. it's more like Wild Aire, on valium. nope. no diamond there.

Echo, rated blue, is a nice trail, but the top is flat and the rest is shortish- no Twister for sure. i talked to a snowboard instructor today who said they had to walk the top. i cant' speak as to Hedges cuz Echo takes you back to the main area or back to the access trail Cedars - and i sure as #%** was'nt going back over Cedars. i think most will feel the same way once the novelty wears off. that's the bad part. we have ~$10,000,000.00 +/- in br, probably more when it's completed(snowmaking etc.) if it goes under utilized then it's no bargain.

perhaps the future will bring better access and more trails. let's hope.

i also hope that people who just cruise this forum will start to post and post often. though i've not seen it done here, moderators should not delete dissenting posts and the regulars shouldn't bully them. this is a forum-open exchange of ideas. this is America. Free Speech for all....not just some.

[CUskibum]

After a nice "stroll" down cedars for my first time at BR, I managed to cut through the woods near the bottom of twister onto Echo. You still go through the Gully, but at least you can get some speed. I can't give a completely accurate description of where I cut, but it was like at the top of the last major slope of twister. The woods barrier between the two trails is very thin and its an easy cut. Hope this helps...

[MidnightCarving]

snowballs i don't totally disagree with what you're saying... the only point i have to say something about is that sagamore doesnt deserve a diamond rating... you and i both know that trail ratings are probably the most subjective rating system ever created. i think alot of the rating system is just a big marketing scam, when fairview first opened they claimed it was going to be "intermediate access to the bottom" yeah well they quickly realized that they stretched the rating too far....

the ratings around the mountain have changed throughout the years too, i've seen old maps where twister is considered a diamond.

so as far as criticizing the trail ratings, if you want to keep the clowns away, pray that they rate everything a double diamond.

btw, someone had commented on hedges being the old backcountry access off of twister... that is correct.

[Harvey44]

some on here claimed to have walked this trail in the off season and found it not too bad - past the gully it's like sunway or twister...aleast it won't be work.

That would have been me. I admit it - I was wrong.

It really seemed to me that when I walked it, that you wouldn't have to poll it. Looking back on it...I've never walked Twister or Sunway in the summer, so my bad. I am pretty optimistic in general, maybe I wanted to believe it was ok. On a powder day like today, it was probably as bad as it will ever be. Under more normal (icier) conditions maybe it will be better.

I have to say I do agree that it seems like a lot of money to spend for the added terrain, at that elevation. Today pointed our another issue that we've all known about...the glades are at Twister Glades elevation, so they won't have legitimate cover too often.

I'm also not sure there is any better access available. If there was...wouldn't they cut that first? Maybe not. Maybe Skimore or a topo expert can give an opinion on that.

It's only been one day. Maybe it's my optimism again but somehow I have this feeling that Burnt Ridge will be considered valuable by the hardcore eventually.

Snowballs... If you felt bullied by something I posted - I apologize.

[ka2kci]

Harvey...it was nice meeting you today. Sorry I didn't get a chance to ski with you. I found that if you cut into Cedars from Twister (the trail, not the glade, about 3/4 of the way down) it isn't very hard to access Cedars. The runout from the bottom of Cedars to the chair is kind of beat but I'm hoping that this will keep the masses away. In order to return to the mountain, I found that going out Tahawus Glade makes it easy to get to the North chair without poling. Anyway the powder today was among the best that I've ever seen, and that includes Western Trips as well. There was nobody on Sagamore today, and the powder was awesome. The only thing to watch out for are the waterbars, they can swallow you up in a heartbeat. Matt

[Harvey44]

Ok Burnt Ridge.

Today was yet another powder day (woo hoo!)... I decided to see how hard it really was to get over there. The routine...Twister, Twister Glade, Echo, Gully and bomb it.

I counted my skating strokes...20 to get over the first rise and 20 to get over the second. I think I had 5 double polls too. (I put another 20 skates in on the way down to the chair...but it wasn't mandatory.

So.... 40 skate strokes....and I'm over there. Coming back it's a cake walk. Hedges, into the trees and up the North. No skating at all if you find the right spot.

I'm changing my mind, I like the new pod. I had a great time over on Saggy and bagged the streams all together.

Nice to meet you too Matt.

Oh yea did I say WOO HOO!?

[Snowballs]

ok. check this out.

i couldn't make it to the mtn. today. did Sags have another fresh coat of waist deep today even though it was chopped up yesterday? were yesterdays tracks covered/buried Sunday morning? do you think it got another crap load of snow over night, aka more than the rest of the mtn? does anyone think Sags had more powder (alot?) on it than the rest of the mtn did on Saturday or even today? yea, i know the whole area got pounded. i live here.

5 or so years ago i was at Gore mid winter, mid week and there was 3"-4" fresh inches layin around the hill from a storm. it was a ghost town. Twister been closed part of the day but opened. the groomer had made only one pass on Twister. myself and a family were making our way down this one path. one of the wee ones got kinda close to me and when i turned to give room i had to get off the groomers path. well when i entered the ungroomed i plummeted and fell. the freekin powder was over waist deep! i landed on my back, one ski still on and i was buried! i had one #$%&** of a time just getting on my feet. then i had one hell of a time finding my other ski. i could barely get out of the powder!!! i had to crawl onto the groomed. i almost gave up on finding my lost/buried ski.

keep in mind this was mid winter and Twister had been groomed many times so this wasn't cuz the snow had never been packed. it was all fresh. don't know if the rest of the trail had same deposit. i remember thinking it was like alluvial sand one sees in a river where some areas are deep and perhaps the wind had slowed there and took a crap. i was amazed at the amount of snow deposited there and wonder why so much more than the rest of the hill. i'm telling you it was over my waist!

this happened on the upper half of twister.

Sags is just over the hill. did twister glades or others over there have anywhere near the snow on them that Sags did this weekend? it's not like their hardwoods would have kept the snow off of the ground. anybody see waist deep in the woods?

perhaps the Mother Load falls on Sags!? it certainly seems to have had more snow than the rest of the hill this weekend. not all the trails were groomed and even if, more snow fell on the them after grooming- they didn't groom them all just before opening.

if this area turns out to be Mother Nature's Outhouse, even occasionally, and she dumps crap loads of snow there - then all bets are off. it will be babes and beers! it won't matter how bad Cedars is, we'll be racing each other to get there. (Harv, i'm gonna skate over yo a$$ :wink: lol)

what do you think? is there a possible phenom here?

is it...............

S - snow
A - accumulates
G - greatly,
S - Snowballs

that worked out pretty good! lol

[mattchuck2]

Well, fwiw, here's my opinion on the Burnt Ridge Terrain:

The last steep pitch on Sagamore was AWESOME in the pow - waist deep and fluffy

I found Cirque Glade to be sick. The entrance was sweet . . . short traverse, then the first time the glades open up a bit, it felt like I was entering a magical kingdom or something. The sun was shining down (like the only time Saturday it did), you are in a gully with Echo above you, and the snow was deep and barely tracked. The whole trail was like an adventure, and I bet that if I do some exploring, I can find some nice lines. I don't say this very often, but the scenery might be the best part of the trail. I found myself stopping to look around a lot (mostly trying to get my bearings to see where on the old Burnt Ridge BC I was), and every time, I was just thinking how great everything looked with all the powder. I didn't have any problem with the stream crossings (I just hopped over them), but I saw a lot of people struggling (mostly people who stupidly decided to take their skis off and try to ford the river - they should've hired an indian guide). The exit kicks you right back to the top of the old Gore-E-Gully (just like the old Burnt Ridge BC used to), and you get right back on Cedars to go up again.

I saw the "Burnt Ridge Glades" from the BR Quad, but I didn't go in. To get to it, you pretty much would have to ski Sagamore almost all the way down, skip the last steep section (the part of the trail I liked most), and traverse into the woods on a slight uphill. The trees in there looked open and decent, but after the Cedars hikes, I wasn't really into missing powder turns for more traversing, so I skipped that too.

[kornfein]

What a poorly laid out addition. Yes Sagamore was epic but how often is it going to be like that? You would think at a mountain that already has too many flats. they would be careful not create any more! Instead they seem to have gone out of their way to do so. If anyone did not notice Echo and Twister are at points less than 50' away. it would have been easy and logical to connect them easing access and regress. In fact many people just went through the woods which is a much shorter jaunt than Gully. Unfortunately most of my party was ahead of me when we passed that entrance. When we finally got o the lift my daughter and i skied Sagamore just after it opened, I haven't skied snow like that in the east in many years-) My wife went around and did Echo which she really liked and she said Ceders wasn't too bad as long as you hit the flat parts with some speed. I'm guessing in more typical Eastern conditions it would be less of a skate. We then took Hedges to Tahawas glades which was actually was easy to get to now. I'm not sure about the rest of Hedges it also looked uphill / flat. Did anyone follow it to Twister?

I just wonder mow much the new quad will get used when there is just Echo to ski and the woods are not open? Looks like if they would have not created Gully, connected Echo with Twister and turned Echo back towards the Burnt Ridge lift a little sooner they would have eliminated all the hiking,

I jumped off of everything in sight on Sagamore.

[highpeaksdrifter]

i also hope that people who just cruise this forum will start to post and post often. moderators should not delete dissenting posts and the regulars shouldn't bully them. this is a forum-open exchange of ideas. this is America. Free Speech for all....not just some.

No one has ever had their post deleted for a dissenting opinion. Your free speech, this is America take infers that dissenting opinions are not tolerated and that isn't true.

[CUskibum]

What a poorly laid out addition. Yes Sagamore was epic but how often is it going to be like that? You would think at a mountain that already has too many flats. they would be careful not create any more! Instead they seem to have gone out of their way to do so. If anyone did not notice Echo and Twister are at points less than 50' away. it would have been easy and logical to connect them easing access and regress. In fact many people just went through the woods which is a much shorter jaunt than Gully.


I was talking with a patroller who commented that Gore made their best efforts to get as much done on BR as possible, but were not able to finish all they had set out for. Had I not done this, I would fully agree that BR was poorly laid out. I HATE CEDARS JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, and I believe they should have done a better job cutting that trail, but who knows, maybe they'll regrade it or something. At the same time, I would also like to think there might be a way to cut another trail to the BR quad base, but I doubt that as well. I think the best solution to avoiding Cedars would be to cut an opening between Twister and Echo. But until then, CUT THROUGH THE WOODS.

The only purpose for Hedges was to provide access to Tahawus glades. If there was a better way to get from the top of the BR quad to Twister, it would probably be from the top of the quad down the other side of the ridge towards Twister, or even off Echo onto Twister near the top of the trail.

I haven't skied BR glades or Cirque glades. I heard the cover was sketchy in some spots and some streams haven't frozen over yet.

After what I've seen so far, I'll give the BR expansion a C+. I like what they have going on over there, and hopefully it'll be better after another summer of work.

I'm interested to hear what everyone else has to say. KEEP TALKING

[Harvey44]

The flatness is somewhat inherent in the mountain. Those flats are everywhere as we all know. If people think putting BRQ where it is is a mistake...where would you put additional trails within the intensive use area? It not like there is a ton of choice.

On the other hand it seems that there could be a trail cut above Gully to make it easier to get through. The spot that you come out of Twister Glades is a few hundred feet above Gully. Anybody know if it can be done? Also has anyone seen illustrations of the planned additional trails? Of course is Twister Glades don't have the coverage....

Hey Matt (Chuck)... remember...it's all about your level. I'm guessing you are one of the better skiers out there. For someone at a lower level ....I was whipped by the end of run on Sagamore in the pow.

[Snowballs]

HPD. didn't say they were. just that they shouldn't be. sorry if i didn't make that clear. thanks for pointing it out. i'll see if it will let me edit.

[megatron]

....I was whipped by the end of run on Sagamore in the pow.

Hey Harv, you wouldn't be so tired if you got rid of those mousetraps, and just lock and load :lol:

C


http://www.postimage.org/aV18ZjdS.jpg (http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV18ZjdS)

[Powderqueen]

The Gore Mountain Shuffle!

That's what we do to get around the old gondi building to get to Rumor, Lies, Cloud. That's what we do to get to the Saddle. That's what we do to get into Tahawus.

And now we get to do the Gore Mountain Shuffle to get to the Burnt Ridge.

Gore is not a very snowboard-friendly mountain. I feel for the knuckle draggers. I won't ski with snowboarders at Gore...they slow me down.

[skimore]

The Gore Mountain Shuffle!

That's what we do to get around the old gondi building to get to Rumor, Lies, Cloud. That's what we do to get to the Saddle. That's what we do to get into Tahawus.

And now we get to do the Gore Mountain Shuffle to get to the Burnt Ridge.



Doesn't sound like much improvement from what was already easily accesible.....for what.....destroying the forest and a bunch of taxpayer $ for more lame trails.

The place was already intermediate heaven. Just created more of the same

[SIAWOL]

Well, fwiw, here's my opinion on the Burnt Ridge Terrain:
I saw the "Burnt Ridge Glades" from the BR Quad, but I didn't go in. To get to it, you pretty much would have to ski Sagamore almost all the way down, skip the last steep section (the part of the trail I liked), and traverse into the woods on a slight uphill. The trees in there looked open and decent, but after the Cedars hikes, I wasn't really into missing powder turns for more traversing, so I skipped that too.

Definite thumbs down to "BR Glades". Seemed like the whole things was a traverse--I kept waiting to get to the goods and before I knew it was at the exit! Never again...

Cirque was OK. Still an awful lot of of traversing and uphill climbs--WTF? Definitely big, though. I found it tough to get in a rhythm, though.

Sagamore was OK, launched a couple of the drops under the lift to make it interesting. But those water bars--they can cause serious trouble!

[fujative.]

launched a couple of the drops under the lift to make it interesting.
speaking of... anyone drop the wall into cirque glades from echo? its pretty fun other than the landing not being the greatest.

[rossi]

other than the landing not being the greatest.


tell me about it...hahaha